Thirty years ago, Haiti raised nearly all the rice it needed. What happened? Bill Quigley, The U.S. Role in Haiti’s Food Riots (April 2008). U.S. intervention in Haitian agricultural policy is not without precedent. Paisley Doods, “US rice doesn’t help struggling Haitian farmers.” Business Week (February 26, 2010).
Monthly Archives: February 2010
Haiti: History
A movement toward a restoration of black pride had been stirring in Haiti before Franklin Roosevelt ended the US occupation. But Haiti, styled a “black republic” by outsiders, was never monochromatically that. Madison Smartt Bell, “The Lost Years,” The Nation (August 11, 2009)
Posted in Haiti
Tagged blackness, class, elites, Haiti, history, independence, race, state
Leave a comment
Haiti: Péralte
Nov. I, 1919.—Killed Charlemagne Péralte, Commander-in-Chief of the Bandits. Brought Charlemagne’s body to Grande Rivière, arriving 9 A.M. Went to Cap Haitien with the body. Received orders to proceeded to Fort Capois next morning. Went to Grand Riviere via handcar, arriving 9 P.M. Wrote report re death of Charlemagne. Captain Herman H. Hanneken quoted in […]
Posted in Haiti
Tagged 1919, 1920, Charlemagne Peralte, Haiti, history, intervention, nation, occupation, resistance, sovereignty
7 Responses
Haiti: State
The more important fact is that Haitian government was already very weak, largely because of international pressure, the pressure to cut public spending; to lay off public servants; to funnel all international investment, or at least the vast majority of it—not into state-based enterprises or state-based investment, things like a national health service or a […]
Haiti: Europe
Switzerland moved Wednesday toward establishing the legal basis to confiscate millions of dollars allegedly looted by the former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, in what could be the beginning of the end of a battle over money that began more than two decades ago. “Ex-Dictator Loses Swiss Ruling Over Haitian Cash,” The New York […]
Haiti: State
If Haitian society cannot move forward and cannot realize the dream of modernity that sparked its revolution at the end of the 18th century, it is in part because it had an elite that lived by siphoning off the country’s productivity to support its personal consumption. J. Michael Dash, “Rebuilding Haiti: The Next Two Hundred […]
Haiti: History
Haitian exceptionalism takes many forms. The most dangerous and resilient is the idea that the Haitian political quagmire is due to some congenital disease of the Haitian mind. Such a conclusion makes Haiti’s political dilemma immune to rational explanation and therefore to solutions that could be both just and practical. Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “Haiti’s Nightmare and […]
Posted in Haiti
Tagged civil society, class, democracy, dictatorship, elites, Haiti, history, independence, peasantry, revolution, sovereignty
Leave a comment
James Weldon Johnson on the National City Bank of New York and Haiti
To know the reasons for the present political situation in Haiti, to understand why the United States landed and has for five years maintained military forces in that country, why some three thousand Haitian men, women, and children have been shot down by American rifles and machine guns, it is necessary, among other things, to […]
Posted in Haiti
Tagged 1915, 1920, African-Americans, banking, Haiti, history, intervention, NAACP, occupation, sovereignty
1 Response
